Free Minecraft soon for Raspberry Pi!


fusion_power

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Fresh news from the Minecon, the well known Raspberry Pi get it's own Minecraft edition:


http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2565


AND it seems that it will be free and also used to "code" for, maybe it's Open Source? :) First thing I see there is a propper port for Pandora, since I don't own a Raspberry Pi. ^^ But overall, great Idea that. Sadly, the Pandora is still not directly under the Radar of Mojang.
 
Somebody should Email notch about the Pandora . I know the first ( or second ... mebe 3rd ) thread I created here ( or anywhere for that matter ) was actually about running Minecraft on the pandora .
 
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How come the Pi got a port then ? ( I will buy a Pi eventually so I can make a MAME cabinet though ) but overall the Pandora is just ... Bosser . Plus it has gaming controls ... A huge Plus . In fact the Physical controls are what sold me .
 
How come the Pi got a port then ? ( I will buy a Pi eventually so I can make a MAME cabinet though ) but overall the Pandora is just ... Bosser . Plus it has gaming controls ... A huge Plus . In fact the Physical controls are what sold me .

Because although Notch got a Pandora, nobody else did; software development was stalled, Craig became a nasty piece of work on the forums... And even now original pre-orders are still waiting. Contrast that with the Pi - over a million shipped.


D.
 
The number of real users will be far less, though. Most people are probably thinking:

  1. Hey! super-cheap computer just like my vista PC but cheaper!
  2. The moment this comes through the door my child will become an instant computer genius!
 
If he releases it for the Raspberry Pi, I can make it run on the Pandora.
 
Not sure about the "compatibility" of the PI and the Pandora, booth have ARM but the PI seems to have another SoC and another GFX Unit. But I'm sure our talented coders here can do something with the Pi port. :)


Maybe Notch has forgotten the Pandora, he once even wrote an Review in his blog...long before he went famous so I guess not much have read it. The Raspberry PI has a wider audience than the Pandora which is one reason why I want a Pandora 2 that has a bigger user base, which means it has to be cheap enough but that's another story.


More users--->more potential coders ands devs---->more awesome software, it's that easy. ;)


Here is the News message from the official Mojang Blog by the way:


http://www.mojang.co...e-raspberry-pi/

"The possibilities are massive. You could organise the cheapest LAN party of all time, or use the Pi to learn the fundamentals of programming on a miniscule budget. It’s like hacking your way into Minecraft and modifying the game world with code, a bit like being Notch, Jeb, or Nathan, but arguably more fun and less stressful."
 
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2 Years old review, when he does a re-review, now that the Firmware has matured and the Repo is constantly filled, the Pandora sales should explode. :D But contacting Notch and remember him of the Pandora could be a hard task.
 
If he releases it for the Raspberry Pi, I can make it run on the Pandora.
While I agree it's possible, there will be some challenges:


- pandora uses softfp ABI, pi uses hardfp, that means you'll need to include all libraries, plus use chroot I guess. Alternative would be to hack the binary ABI tags..


- pi requires Broadcom specific libraries and calls to have GLES working, but those can probably be stubbed out with LD_PRELOAD or fake broadcom libraries (if they don't decide to use other broadcom stuff of course).
 
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How come the Pi got a port then ? ( I will buy a Pi eventually so I can make a MAME cabinet though ) but overall the Pandora is just ... Bosser . Plus it has gaming controls ... A huge Plus . In fact the Physical controls are what sold me .

Because although Notch got a Pandora, nobody else did; software development was stalled, Craig became a nasty piece of work on the forums... And even now original pre-orders are still waiting. Contrast that with the Pi - over a million shipped.


D.

Do you just look at threads and then try to shoe horn in an attempt to troll?


Just to confirm, before this becomes official, more people than Notch have got a Pandora. No one sent Notches Pandora early and he didn't jump the queue.


Also the Pi foundation is a charity selling at cost price.


We have no wish or intention to sell millions of Pandoras.
 
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Crikeys, just imagine the possibility if we get some sort of ARM glue cross-binding tech bound out there for all these interesting new ARM platforms.


I guess the hard/soft float problem could .. possibly .. be resolved with code-patching (intercept float instructions, rewire) in some cases, but it depends on the complexity of the code of course, and is rarely worth the effort unless it works well. I have had to examine Linux(-x86,-arm,-ppc) executable image cross-compatibility problems at a previous employer, even to the point of patching /dev/kmem to rewire text segments of grandfathered bins sitting on SIGWAIT to continue life in a new OS with slightly different CPU config (co-processors virtualized, etc.) and rewired libs can be made to work. Sometimes.


For the float stuff, its not just search and replace, although ..


Anyway .. all this hassle just belies the point that open source rocks hard. Porting Minecraft to rPi: no big thing!
 
Cant he just compile the bin with soft floating points instead of hard floating points? Not sure about the broadcom lib, but going from hard to soft floating point in generall is just an option to set in the compiler.
 
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